hing could be simpler and nothing more
mysterious. The mystification was complete, but not the suffering.
Suffering is never complete. However deep the hell, there is always a
deeper one.

From the letter he looked at the walls. They were dumb. There was no
answer for the demons there, not anywhere, perhaps, except among
werewolves, basilisks and Mrs. Austens. These monsters did not occur to
him. The monstrous letter sufficed. But Margaret was still too near, her
vows were too recent for him to credit it, and the fact that he could
not disclosed itself in those words which all have uttered, all at least
before whom the inexplicable has sprung.

"It is impossible!"

Yet there it was. Yet there too was something else. But what? At once he
was back again in the issueless circle of infernal questions.

The day before he had known that something was amiss. The attitude of
Mrs. Austen had been too assured, too venomous, too smiling, for him to
doubt it. But though he did not doubt that, not for a second did he
doubt Margaret either. Always aware of the woman's hostility, he had
been equally aware that it could not influence the girl. Not for a
moment therefore had he accepted the statement that the engagement was
broken. At the time he had thought that when next he had a word with
Margaret it would all be explained. But all what? His life was as clean
as his face. It was not that then. On the other hand he was not rich. By
the same token, Margaret's only idea of money was to help others with
it. It was not that then either. Nor was it that she had not loved him.
She had loved him. He could have sworn it and not out of vanity, for he
had none, but because never could she have promised herself to him if
she had not. None the less, she could not see him again. She had thought
it over. She was not suited to him. He was told to forget her. Why?

That Why, repeating itself, forced him deeper into the circles of which
hell is made.

But even in hell despair is brief. Unless it consume you utterly, and it
would not be hell if it did, it goads. It compels you to seek an issue.
Apart from time, which is very slow, and resignation, which is never
prompt, there is another portal.

A poet, who discovered it, scrawled on it: "Lascia la donna e studia la
matematica"--a cryptogram which subsequent pilgrims variously
deciphered. To some, it spelled Thought; to others, Action. Action is
thought put in motion.

Lennox, to whom time wa